Which Florida First Step Act will pass, one that cuts incarceration or one that doesn't?

In a state long averse to reducing criminal sentences, Florida Senate Republicans this week laid down a bold challenge for their counterparts in the state House as the two chambers debate how best to take what they’re calling a first step toward reform.

The Legislature is shifting away from two decades of a lock-‘em-up approach to consider offering prisoners chances at reducing their sentences.

Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, sponsor of the Senate overhaul (SB 642) said the old approach has spawned 108 mandatory minimum crimes that crowd prisons, strain the state budget and leave inmates with scant rehabilitation, training or prospects for not returning to crime when released.

The Senate overhaul has now passed all committees and will likely go to a floor vote.

But the House’s version of the Florida First Step Act still doesn’t have most of the drastic reforms of the Senate bill, and it likely wouldn’t reduce the number of people in prison.

The House version still has to make it through a final committee before it goes to the floor. If both versions are approved, the two chambers will have to reconcile their bills’ significant differences.

Those differences have a real impact for people like Jill Trask of Atlanta. She hopes to celebrate a December wedding anniversary with her husband, Joel, who has been behind bars in Florida the past 11 years.

“I’ve been serving 11 years with him,” Trask told a Senate committee Tuesday, recounting their lost years together.

Joel Trask, sentenced to a mandatory 20 years in prison for aggravated assault in St. Lucie County, could become eligible for release under the Senate’s proposal, but not under the current House proposal.

Jill Trask said that when her husband was told of the Senate’s measure, “He wept on the phone, because now he has a glimmer of hope.”

But those anniversary dreams tied to an overhaul of Florida’s troubled prison system hinge on tough upcoming talks between the Senate and House, as the Legislature hurtles toward a scheduled May 3 finish.

“Everything’s being negotiated right now,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Naples.

While Florida’s crime rates are at a five-decade low, the state’s prison budget is at an all-time high. For years, Brandes has been sounding the alarm that the costly 96,000-inmate system is untenable, and this year, he had prison wardens testify about the dire conditions.

Even as the number of inmates has started to decline, thanks to longer average sentences, the inmates are getting older and the cost of housing them has increased.

“The House has said they want the best criminal justice system in the country. That’s a bold statement that’s going to require some work to get to,” Brandes said. “As it stands, their bill doesn’t get us there. We think they’re making a good faith stride, but we think a lot more needs to be done.”

But House leaders still say that’s a reason to be wary of too much change all at once.

The Senate’s 360-page bill covers many topics.

· It would reduce Florida’s toughest-in-the-nation gain time laws, allowing people convicted of non-violent crimes to earn time off their sentence for good behavior down to 65 percent of their initial sentence. Currently, all inmates can only reduce their sentence to 85 percent, one of the harshest versions of gain time in the country.

· It would say that someone who steals something worth less than $750 should be given a misdemeanor, not a felony. Currently, the threshold is $300, the lowest in the nation.

· It would also make driving with a suspended license a misdemeanor in all offenses. Currently, it is a felony after someone’s third offense.

· And relevant to the Trasks, it would make past reforms retroactive, allowing people who were sentenced under harsher old drug trafficking and aggravated assault laws the opportunity to be re-sentenced and potentially released.

In addition to affecting how many people are in prison, the bill also takes a few other significant steps. It requires that police record all interrogations, and if possible, prison inmates should be kept in a facility within 300 miles of their home.

The gain-time rule may be the most significant aspect of the Senate’s bill. The Urban Institute had estimated that if the state reduced its cap on gain time to 65 percent for just non-violent offenses, that it could immediately reduce the prison population by 10,484 people, or 11 percent.

A Senate staff analysis found it would free an estimated 7,800 prisoners over five years, eventually saving taxpayers about $419 million a year.

“It’s so encouraging to see an expansive discussion of criminal justice reform in Florida,” said Leah Sakala, the Urban Institute researcher who modeled the potential changes, “because it’s a discussion that has been needed for a long time.” But, she added, Legislators should be wary of thinking it does enough to reduce the prison population. “I’m glad it’s called the First Step Act because there is a lot that needs to be done afterward.”

While Brandes himself said his own proposal is modest and doesn't go far enough to meet the House's goal of creating the best justice system in the nation, he still has to persuade the House to accept even those modest reforms.

House Judiciary Chair Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said his side is unlikely to embrace changing the 85 percent requirement or revamp mandatory minimums.

“I think we’re happy,” he said.

While more than half of state prisoners are in for violent crimes – and unlikely to gain much from even the Senate’s proposed changes – 36 percent of inmates are imprisoned for nonviolent drug or property offenses, and seen as most eligible for help.

Other changes advancing in Tallahassee look certain to win approval from both the House and Senate.

The House wants to raise the threshold for felony theft from $300 to $1,000 – the first time this standard would be increased since 1986, while the Senate would bring the level to $750. Retailers have traditionally opposed the boost, but the move looks likely now.

Other House steps, also endorsed by the Senate, would expand programs to help released inmates return to society; make it easier for them to get occupational licenses and change probation rules to require tightest supervision only for the most serious offenders.

The House and Senate revise some lower-level drug sentences, along with those faced by some re-offenders, juveniles and youthful offenders.

But in a move seen as defying the Senate’s groundbreaking changes, the House’s only attack on mandatory minimums is erasing a one-year prison term for selling, distributing or transporting horse meat for human consumption – a rarely charged crime.

Heading into the Legislature’s homestretch, House allies include law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys associations, critical of the Senate’s easing the 85 percent sentencing requirement.

Brandes “dumped it so unexpectedly and so fast, and it’s so long,” said Gainesville State Attorney Bill Cervone of the Senate’s omnibus bill. “There are things in there we’re ok with. There are things in there we’re absolutely not ok with.”

Cervone said he is most opposed to the idea of making reforms retroactive, allowing people in prison to get out early for good behavior or allowing them to have a new sentencing hearing.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has stayed out of the legislative clash so far. But DeSantis has hired a former Brandes staffer as his policy director, and as a protégé of President Donald Trump, the new governor is seen as likely influenced by the federal First Step Act, which the president signed into law just before Christmas. Among other proposals, the federal law, similar to the state Senate’s proposal, included retroactive sentencing reductions.

David Safavian, general counsel of the American Conservative Union, described the House proposal as “weak tea, indeed.” And he urged lawmakers to get behind the Senate approach.

“If Trump can drive criminal justice reform legislation in a city as divided and partisan and bitter as Washington, D.C., there’s no reason why policymakers in Tallahassee can’t do the same,” Safavian said.

The bill isn’t the only major criminal justice change working through the legislature.

The Senate’s budget proposal creates a task force that would study the state’s criminal punishment code. If that task force eventually leads to changes in the sentencing guidelines, that could have an enormous impact on sentencing in Florida. The guidelines haven’t been changed in the last two decades, but in the 1990s, they were made much harsher by requiring more people go to prison unless attorneys sought mercy.

Another bill would give judges discretion over whether children can be charged as adults. State attorneys currently have the unfettered discretion to decide if a child should go in juvenile court or adult court. They have opposed the proposal, saying if judges believe children deserve juvenile sanctions instead of prison there’s nothing stopping them even if the child is in adult court.

Alannah James, who lives in St. Lucie County, said she hopes legislators remember what impact their decision will have on the families of the 96,000 people in prison. She said after her fiance went to prison for a 12-year sentence related to drug and gun charges, she had to start managing his rental property, go through bankruptcy and deal with his taxes. “It's really stressed, like really really stressful, y'know. Everything around you is moving but you're standing still. … I've been basically having to do everything by myself. I've been stressed out. My health has failed.”

She said she hopes the Legislature changes the gain-time cap.

“I hope they make it better because the prisons are too packed with drug dealers versus murderers and rapists. If a person didn't commit a violent crime, they're not a threat. Selling drugs, trying to take care of your family is not near as bad as killing somebody or raping somebody.”